@article{8772678,
  abstract     = {{Policymakers and economists are becoming increasingly concerned about wealth inequality. Here we estimate Belgium's wealth distribution - and based on this distribution - the revenue potential, distributional impact, and environmental effect of three proposals for a one-off Belgian wealth tax. Our method consists of (1) esti-mating the Belgian wealth distribution by extending survey data with a top-tail Pareto distribution based on a novel national rich list, and (2) combining the estimated wealth distribution with proposed tax configurations and published elasticities. There are four main results. First, the wealthiest 1% of households possess similar to 24% of total net wealth, substantially more than previous estimates suggest. Second, the revenue potential of a one-off tax is considerably higher than estimated by wealth tax advocates. Third, the distributional impact would be limited as the richest 1% of households would still possess at least 23% of total net wealth. Fourth, a one-off tax would likely reduce CO2 emissions by only 0.1-0.6%. Overall, our findings suggest a one-off wealth tax could finance over half of Belgium's COVID-19 costs, but would lead to only small reductions in wealth inequality and environmental impact. Ecological economists may therefore wish to pursue other policy proposals to achieve fair distribution and sustainable scale.}},
  articleno    = {{107385}},
  author       = {{Apostel, Arthur and O’Neill, Dan}},
  issn         = {{0921-8009}},
  journal      = {{ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  pages        = {{12}},
  title        = {{A one-off wealth tax for Belgium : revenue potential, distributional impact, and environmental effects}},
  url          = {{http://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2022.107385}},
  volume       = {{196}},
  year         = {{2022}},
}

Altmetric

View in Altmetric

Web of Science

Times cited: